Top five posts: year-end edition
- Steven Owen
- Dec 17, 2024
- 2 min read
As we conclude the year, we look back at the top five most popular Interest Group research posts from the second half of 2024, with a nod back to the most viewed post of the first half.
Throughout the year, we post about a wide range of topics that believe are relevant to faith-based asset owners, including insights about research and reports published by organisations such as Morningstar, Robeco, ICCR, Vontobel, and the American Institute for Economic Research.
We also publish guest posts and our own internal posts about issues affecting our ecosystem, such as the rise of AI and overcoming impediments to implementing faith-consistent investing. In the first half of the year, our most clicked post was about a report from Phenix Capital, its 2024 Impact Fund Universe Report.
Read on to learn the top five most clicked posts from the second half of the year.
The fifth most clicked post was entitled Penalize or optimize – What’s a better approach to portfolio sustainability and performance? The post summarised a paper from researchers at Robeco, a Dutch asset manager, in the most recent issue of the Financial Analysts Journal. The report addressed the question – is it optimal to constrain your portfolio from holding companies engaged in undesirable activities (eg, carbon energy production), or can investors incorporate sustainability measures as part of the portfolio’s objectives?
The fourth most clicked post was State of company engagement – observations from ICCR, as covered at the ICCR fall conference. The theme, Navigating Troubled Waters, reflected dynamics present in Europe and especially in the US where: 'A politically charged landscape...' where corporations '...face significant challenges navigating their support for democratic values without appearing partisan or becoming entangled in controversy'.
The third most clicked post was Navigating AI: What does Pope Francis have to say?
In this post, we discussed the comments of the Pope at the G7 summit in June in Bari, Italy – the first time a Pope has been invited to participate in a G7 summit. In his address, Pope Francis described AI as a 'cognitive-industrial revolution' with the dual potential to democratise knowledge and advance scientific research, but also to increase social inequities and biases.
The second most clicked post was a product development note written for the Interest Group by our friends at Green Climate Fund; Green Climate Fund: FCI Forum follow up and product development note. The note describes the development of a commingled fund to can provide the faiths with an investment vehicle that can enable them to assist people in developing countries to finance climate change adaptation and mitigation activities.
And in the number one most clicked spot – collectively – a series of three posts penned in October by FaithInvest's Executive Chair, Dave Zellner, which challenge misconceptions about FCI, describe the characteristics of a sustainable economy, and explain how the pursuit of a sustainable economy can mitigate long-term risks.
We hope you enjoyed FaithInvest's Research Posts in 2024 and we look forward to continuing to bring you actionable FCI insights in the year ahead!
